I normally despise sophisticated exegesis of sociological phenomena, but I find myself genuinely fascinated by the discussion of conservatives and beauty queens. It’s not just the whole Carrie Prejean/Anita Bryant thing or that beauty pageants, like many things involving conservatives, turn out to be extremely gay, it’s that some right-wing would-be intellectuals like the idea of beauty queens as messengers of conservatism:
However this came to be, what fascinates me is that the Miss USA pageant is becoming a forum where beautiful young women are giving witness to views you, and I know some of them, have. Miss Prejean was victimized in the wake of her honest answer, of course. But the media can’t ignore the reality that Carrie and women like her exist, because of the prominent, popular forum in which she gave her answer.
It’s far from just Sarah Palin, baby.
It’s not so different than the Douthatian anti-Avatar jihad and it’s more or less exactly the same as this:
See those shirtless models in the storefront tossing footballs in the air? There’s a better use of their time and efforts. Tanned, coiffed and seriously cut, these young studs could be tossing free-trade legislation across the halls of the Cannon House Office Building faster than you can Twitter “The Bella Twins.” Just tell these $15-an-hour beefcakes there’s a Democrat standing between them and a $169,300 job.
Right-wing blogs are angry about Muslim beauty pageants not just because they may hate Muslims, but also because they think pop cultural minutiae like beauty pageants are very important in some larger political context.
licensed to kill time
Cheer up, sleepy preJean, oh what can it mean?
The Moar You Know
NOT GAY
Napoleon
I would include in that medal counts at the Olympics and whether we are sending manned missions to the Moon now that the Chinese are thinking about it. They are all about things like that.
JGabriel
Doesn’t this just fall in line with the general perception of the GOP valuing marketing and appearance over policy and effective governance?
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Hubertus Bigend
I have spent a large part of my life working for a law school in the Deep South, and I have learned that one of the things that beauty pageant contestants do with the rest of their lives is go to law school. Don’t assume that these women are necessarily dummies, because some of them aren’t.
I wouldn’t want to be in a knife fight with any one of them.
dollared
Gosh, let me be a bit analytical and say there is an essential element of elitism in all that beauty pageant stuff – the idea that beauty contest winners are first and foremost winners, and they should therefore spend time with us societal winners (even if we are fat kids who simply won the stork lottery).
Doesn’t hurt that it also tends to align with both monarchical values and traditional sex roles.
Michael
I flipped by Fox while on the elliptical cross trainer at my local YMCA. They had Miss Oklahoma on (the runner-up), extolling her white people answer on immigration and tubing the winner on the pole dance shots. Obviously, a classy Christian chick, which means that there’s probably a video of Miss Oklahoma blowing a horse out there somewhere.
Bubblegum Tate
By the way, did any of the judges actually say, “I didn’t want Carrie Prejean to win because of her answer to the gay marriage question,” or is that just the excuse she made for losing, which then got accepted as the Official Narrative?
Brian J
Based on their standards, shouldn’t they be supporting Obama because of this lovely lady working in the White House?
And yes, to answer your question, I was looking for an excuse to link to that picture.
Cacti
Meh.
Other than a narrow section of conservative media, who on the right really pays attention beauty pageants?
For proof, ask your average GOP voter who won the last 5 Miss USA contests.
Steve
I think beauty pageants are, in fact, conservative events because they feature women in a “traditional” role of being gawked at and objectified. This is why liberals either (a) think all beauty pageants are horrible sexist claptrap or (b) simply don’t care about them. Generally speaking, it’s not our speed.
I think one thing that makes these right-wing freakouts so bizarre is that they’re getting worked up entirely on their own. It’s not an issue like gay marriage, where one side is strongly for and the other side is strongly against. It’s not even the Dixie Chicks. There’s no counter-reaction among liberals at all. You won’t find a single liberal blog that is like “hooray, a Muslim!” other than for reasons of utter schadenfreude.
Americanadian
Fixed.
Brian J
@JGabriel:
Hold on a minute! You realize what you are suggesting, don’t you?
Napoleon
@Brian J:
Thank you for that.
Cacti
@Bubblegum Tate:
I believe the pageant folks said (off the record?) that she would have lost anyway.
But that doesn’t make for a good martyr narrative, now does it?
Craig
The thing that I always thought was odd about Ms. Prejean was that she in fact articulated the pro-equality position on marriage: “I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one way or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage.”
I know that’s not what she meant, but it is what she said. I know that it is also, in point of fact, not correct–you can’t choose same-sex marriage in most of the ways that matter legally. But, again, for a beauty contestant, it’s not the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
vtr
Mostly, I always thought the new Miss Whatever looked like the sort of young woman my grandmother would think was beautiful, like Sarah Palin.
JGabriel
@Brian J: Too obvious?
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Tazistan Jen
I haven’t watched a beauty pageant since an elderly relative of mine who liked them died in the eighties. As Steve said, they really aren’t geared to appeal to us lefty feminist sorts. But all this does make me want to watch Miss Congeniality again. :-)
FormerSwingVoter
This. Right-wingers talk a lot about how academia and Hollywood and the media in general were actively taken over by liberals to control every aspect of our culture (I swear, I am not making this up). They believe that if you control the cultural levers, you control the window through which politics is viewed by the public as a whole.
cleek
it’s a conservative mantra that the media (both news and entertainment sides) are dominated by liberals who are at all times seeking to impose their agenda on the country. it’s all a big liberal conspiracy – just like everything else.
and if you accept that, then it’s probably pretty exciting to find things that look conservative peeking out here and there. somehow, a plucky little movie has slipped under the liberals radar! hooray! and so that breeds people who seek out these things, for the honor of being the first to trumpet them, or to complain about the fact that you can’t find enough.
and competition for dollars and eyeballs gets them making bigger and bigger noises out of smaller and smaller events.
false premise + perpetual victimhood + bored attention hounds = conservative culture war
FormerSwingVoter
@Cacti:
In fairness, I seem to recall one of the judges saying it had an effect on how he judged her. I don’t know if it would have changed the final result, though.
Brian J
@JGabriel:
No, seriously, do you realize that you are suggesting the Republicans aren’t serious about governing? I mean, what on earth would give you that idea? It’s almost as if you’ve been awake for the last couple of years.
someguy
I’d pay more attention to what right wing pundits are saying about beauty pageants, but I’m having trouble hearing what they are saying from deep, deep inside of their little closets.
Nimm
It’s a Scientology “strategy.” Find the most attractive, famous faces for your movement that you can.
People like attractive people. People like celebrities. You’ll get more money and power if famous, attractive people are representing you on the teevee, and selling your “ideas.”
Not much more to it than that. Beauty pageant contestants only matter because the winner gets on the news for a while. If she can say nice things about Prop 8 and Mitt Romney while she’s on the teevee, that’s another news cycle won.
JGabriel
@Tazistan Jen:
I watched that once on an international flight. I kept flipping between the English and German sound channels. Somehow, it was much funnier in German. Probably because I don’t understand German (Entschuldigung, Ich verstehe nicht Deutsch. Sprechen sie Englisch?)
But Michael Caine shouting “Mein Gott!” is hilarious.
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Bubblegum Tate
@FormerSwingVoter:
Hence Andrew Breitbart. Who, naturally, became Princess Jesus Boobies’ de facto publicist, using his sites to shill for her on a daily basis.
Xboxershorts
If they did the A&F thing, then the GOP would be a lot gayer. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
On second thought, no, the GOP probably wouldn’t be a lot gayer. Just more open about it. Maybe that’s a good thing.
JGabriel
@Brian J: (hurt whinging) You coulda just said yes, smart-ass. Heh.
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Allan
If there’s a competition somewhere, the American must win.
If there’s a competition among Americans, the most American must win.
We are capable of expressing only:
Self-righteous chauvinistic bullying, e.g. USA! Suck on this!
or
Aggrieved victimhood/martydom, e.g. ACORN stole my vote! Reconciliation is worse than Hitler!
This is all you need to know.
Jager
@Brian J</a
Ali doesn't appeal to conservatives, she has natural breasts.
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
@FormerSwingVoter:
I would agree with that, and extend it a little further to say that symbolic events are very important to them, more than practical data. Remember all those schools being painted in Iraq?
someguy
@Xboxershorts:
Simply not possible, my good man.
They are the only party in history that could possibly have been made more gay by Andy “Butch” Sullivan’s departure.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. Well, except for all their gay hatred.
bootsy
So, how do we place money on Breitbart having a “luggage-lifting” moment that pushes him out of the closet?
I’m willing to say it will happen before the end of the year, because the drama of the election will surely drive him to high (drunk) passion.
Remember November
Beauty pageants are srs bizns….
vapid, surgically enhanced bimbos are the avatars of consurvatizm!
Me am lucky to not be Judge!
JGabriel
@Allan:
The fact that an Arab-American did win the pageant says otherwise. It’s kind of poor form to attribute to all, or most, Americans the attitudes of the GOP.
They did lose the last Presidential election and the last two Congressional elections, after all.
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licensed to kill time
Beauty pageant contestants are representative of Mom and apple pie. They had to be embraced by conservatives even more fervently once those durn feminazis started dissin’ them as empty headed Barbie dolls.
Forget about it, Jake – it’s the Culture War. The endless, endless Culture War.
Cacti
The funniest thing about the right wing kneejerking over this is how deep their racist paranoia runs.
They hated the brown, Muslim girl, ergo, the Democrats must have been cheering for her.
JGabriel
@Jager: Ali Campoverdi makes me wish I were a ten-fifteen year younger and better-looking White House aide.
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Splitting Image
Movement conservatives have invested a great deal of time and effort in demonizing Islam and women are a very important part of the plan.
Islam is an existential threat to our way of life both because of the horrible, horrible way they treat women (Poor, helpless things, look at them covered from head to toe) and because even the women are fanatical jihadists who hate us for our freedoms (Look at them covered from head to toe like that. What are they hiding?)
The very worst thing that can happen to them is to have a Muslim woman win a bikini contest and provoke one of the bobbleheads into asking the obvious question: “How do you reconcile being Muslim with entering a bikini contest?” and having her give an intelligent answer. (“Being Muslim means praying every day, making the trip to Mecca, and giving to charity. Posing in a bikini doesn’t stop me from doing any of that. In fact it gives me a greater incentive to fast.”)
They might start to seem… human.
Slightly off-topic, a woman in Saudi Arabia just beat up a religious cop who was harassing her. Have a look. I hope nothing happens to her because of it. If she gets away with it, those idiots might quickly find themselves on the way out. Fingers crossed.
Cat Lady
Maybe Miley Cyrus can enlist Miss USA to continue her Alinsky-like plan to indoctrinate country music and pageant fans with evil libtard ideas of uncloseted gay sex and marriage equality.
Calouste
@Brian J:
The shocking thing JGabriel said was that he seems to suggest that Republicans put any value to policy and effective governance in the first place. I’d like to see some solid proof to back such an outrageous statement.
Caramuru
@Americanadian:
The preoccupation with standards of beauty and conservative ideology is definitely consistent with the recurring right-wing meme that “our women are prettier.” What they are doing here is seeking to reinforce their uber-masculinity fantasy posturing, trying to find validation by pointing out beautiful women they imagine would be their gender counterparts.
LD50
It’s the same as when the wingnuts flipped out over Brokeback Mountain. It’s like the traditional Reaganesque ideal of The American Cowboy was sacred to them, like part of Christianity. I guess beauty pageants are another part of their Redneck Jesus iconography.
Gunner Billy K
Thanks for reminding me I need to listen to that song again. One of the greatest pop gems ever written.
aimai
@Nimm:
This is quite right. Also, I think the whole “beauty contest” thing is related to the virginal/cheerleader image. The more local the beauty contest the more likely that the local ethnic community, whatever it was, would promote its own standards of beauty. But the larger and more national the focus, like the Miss USA, the more likely that ethnicity and difference would be smoothed out, or eliminated, in the final rounds when the most acceptable/highest status ethnic look would be valorized. So you’ve got a pyramidal system in which outliers and other ethnicities would be, historically, progressively thrown out. But the imagined meritocratic nature of the “competition” itself legitimized those losses.
Anita Bryant and all those other hard charging women who rose up through the beauty queen ranks had a huge emotional stake in feeling that they won, fair and square rather than simply as an interchangeable avatar of the master race. And it was also a very respectable way to garner money and chances in a world that wasn’t offering much to women.
As educational opportunities: business, politics, other things have opened up for women the only ones left competing on mere beauty and bathing suits have come to represent a lot of “left behind” white middle america. Its like pro sports is for boys–you have no idea how many loser americans in fly over country imagine that if they pay enough money for their kid’s sports team/tiara their little johhny or janey will get a college scholarship.
Mooslims are taking our college scholarship money! Terrorists have won.
But I agree that its an entirely unfought and one sided culture war.
aimai
Allan
@JGabriel: Did you omit the rest of that comment on purpose to build some kind of weird case against me, or is your sarcasm meter on the fritz?
FormerSwingVoter
@HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist:
I’d go even further than that, and say that conservatives in general elevate symbolic events to near-fetish status (Pledge of Allegiance, etc) while harboring a deep, burning hatred of practical data.
The very concept that “objective reality” is a thing that exists is anathema to these people. If a liberal looks at a thermostat and says “It is eighty degrees outside”, it is the core belief of modern conservatism that they must immediately shriek “NO! IT IS TWENTY DEGREES! BRRR IS IT COLD!!” and then wail about “liberal bias” if anyone even hints that their view isn’t automatically equal or superior.
joeyess
What Breitbart typed first:
MoeLarryAndJesus
The Homecoming Queen Has A Gun!
b/w
Birther Girls Are Easy
Amanda in the South Bay
Even back when I identified as a conservative, (say, W’s first term) I thought this habit of trying to make conservative mountains out of bullshit pop culture molehills was tiring.
I remember when the first Spiderman came out, I was going to a traditional Latin Mass parish. After mass one Sunday, I was hanging out with fellow mass goers, and they praised Spiderman for a scene in which grace was said before dinner! You, I and every other normal person might think that’s fucking ridiculous, but I figure its a desire among cons to try to outflank the left, so to speak. See, pop culture is really conservative, and its those godless leftists who are distorting the true Christian message of comic book grace!
Or the massive wanking over the LOTR movies when they came out, how they were true to tolkien’s Catholicism, blah de fucking dah. That wanking made me never want to read those books.
Howlin Wolfe
You know that if the conservative tribe did control the media (as opposed to simple corporatists) you’d see political correctness on steroids; that is, “conservative” political correctness. They not only would not produce anything that was remotely critical of their version of reality, but they would punish anyone who tried, and blacklist them too. Corporatists, on the other hand, are happy to produce anything that makes them money, profit being their raison d’etre. As verification, witness the text book content struggle in Texas. Truth matters not; it’s how much it hews to the wingnut line that is important.
JGabriel
@Allan: Sarcasm meter on the fritz. It happens. Nothing personal.
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Maude
@licensed to kill time:
Oh, win. How did you think of that?
licensed to kill time
@Maude:
Hey hey, it’s the Monkees!
…just slipped a pre in the Jean ;-) ok, that was squiffy…
ericblair
@Amanda in the South Bay:
I remember the conservatives trying to stuff LOTR into their prebuilt boxes when those movies came out, and it was so incoherent I can’t remember a lot of it. Reading it, you’d get that Tolkien hated technology, loved languages A LOT, didn’t seem to relate to women that well, and was seriously classist (Sam in the novels was nauseatingly and approvedly servile). Hell of a story, though. I don’t think he followed any of the modern US left/right distinctions, so the conservatives just made up a lot of crap.
Splitting Image
Don’t let that sort of stuff ruin your enjoyment of the books. I would also suggest reading Tolkien’s own published letters. A lot of people actually wrote him about the religious issues that turn up in the books and he often wrote them back to tell them in the driest, most professorial tones that they were full of crap.
Jay
Uhhh, Doug? Remember: you’re talking about right wing blogs here: mostly “epistemically closed” echo-chamber wankfests who, for whatever reason, generally try to fit virtually anything (or everything) into “some larger political context”. Even though said “context” is usually simple-minded tribalism.
Jay C
FWIW, you shouldn’t let that stop you: and in any case, rightard blathering over Tolkien is nothing compared to how they carry on about C S Lewis: Remember when the first Narnia movie came out? And so many starboard-leaning bloggers pissing and moaning about how its poor reviews and mediocre box-office take were sure signs of knee-jerk “liberal bias” against religion?
PS: that was me at 4:55: FYWP.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Nope. If you have a kid or a younger sibling (or a good memory) you know kids go through a period where they shout MINE GIMME WAAAH!! about everything. These assholes never grew out of that phase.
On top of that, in their tiny heads anything they like has to be Conservative and therefore good. (Witness those super-sad posts where they try to convince themselves that various bands, books or movies are Conservative.) When the nasty icky browns/gays/libs/ get their hands on it it is all RUINED and they can’t enjoy it any more.
Understand that as far as they’re concerned the Miss U.S.A. contest was STOLEN from them and they’re just as angry as a sane person would be if a real thief took his actual property. Expect a zillion more years of carping because they won’t be happy until they get the contest back from the nasty libs who took it and then they’ll be paranoid that the shiny rhinestone tiara might get taken again.
Dino
I believe Redshift pointed this out years (actually days but it seems like eons on teh internets) ago with his remark about the J curve. https://balloon-juice.com/2009/06/21/fringe-ideologies/
The wingers seem hung up on symbols. An Ayrab Miss USA isn’t just some hottie to ogle while she opens supermarkets, she signifies something important (what that is I could give a fuck).
They have the whole style over substance thing all fucked up. I can’t eat a symbol, a symbol doesn’t keep me warm at night. I just don’t understand why they get so worked up.
Comrade Dread
They needed to distract themselves from the horrors of the Star Wars prequals with their evil liberal messages about a leader who gins up a false war to seize extraordinary powers and enslave the galaxy.
I needed to be distracted from the Star Wars prequals too, but it was mostly because of the acting. And the writing. And Jar Jar. And kid Anakin.
Barbara
All I could think when I read this was, how in Christ’s name did so many people manage to become so stupid? How can a beauty pageant possibly matter?
And as for Breitbart — couldn’t he have picked some retailer other than A&F, notorious for its efforts to “hide” people of color in the backroom?
Why don’t they all just start a collective website entitled byandforwhitepeople.com?
fucen tarmal
beauty in the traditional sense is a blank slate devoid of destinguishing character that forces one to wonder and allows one to project their own image of what that beautiful person is about.
republican politicians and appointees have the same character, but are also controllable, and slaves to the agenda.
it really is a natural fit.
someone with an pre-existing identity to reconcile messes that up.
Bubblegum Tate
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Oh man, those posts are way too funny. Remember when the NRO did that “Greatest Conservative Rock Songs” list? Comedy for days.
Origuy
@Jay C: Narnia was pretty obviously a Christian allegory, but it was nothing compared to the Space Trilogy. Lewis laid it on pretty thick, but it was an earlier work and meant for adults.
Steve
@Jay C:
I thought the Narnia books were, in fact, an allegory about Christianity, whereas the Tolkien books were just a story about elves. I will gladly confess my ignorance, but am I wrong on either account?
maus
@FormerSwingVoter:
Which is true. They are quite adept to “rewriting” reality, controlling the media depiction of reality, and essentially rewriting history, making the rest of us (who were alive at any point in time that they choose to redefine) feel absolutely crazy. And of course, “they” push the media to always, ever call us crazy for feeling uncomfortable with these depictions. After all, the media is left-wing, therefore how could they not be pandering to us with this center-right bullshit?
maus
@Steve:
Nope, you’re correct on both. Plenty of conservatives love to co-opt LOTR to fit their narratives, regardless of intent.
licensed to kill time
__
Speaking of exegesis…I read all the Narnia books and all the Tolkien books when I was a kid and enjoyed them immensely just for the stories. It really didn’t enhance my experience later to read all the ‘what he really meant was’ theses or that Aslan was supposed to be Jesus, just like finding out that Lewis Carroll liked to photograph little girls didn’t add anything to Alice in Wonderland.
Much as I enjoy literature, sometimes I really hate literary criticism and deconstruction.
And the books are always better than the movies!
Keith G
@bootsy:
I bet he is a very loud power bottom.
Jay C
@Steve:
Nope, not really: Lewis was always a bit more straightforward in pushing the religious-allegory aspect of his books: Tolkien (while personally quite serious about his [Catholic] religion) tended to downplay explicitly sectarian stuff: but at least as far as LOTR is concerned, JRRT would probably been annoyed to have it described as “just a story about elves”. YMMV.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Jay C:
So would it be safe to say that the LOTR books are heavily influenced by JRRT’s bizarre personal blend of Catholicism and traditionalism, but are not meant to be overly polemical, while CSL’s works are merely apologetics dressed up as fiction?
Quiddity
On Letterman last night, he joked about the Miss USA winner (from Michigan), and said that John McCain had already picked her as his running mate for 2012.
Bubblegum Tate
Right on cue, it’s Breitbart’s Merry Band of R-tards.
In the first fucking comment we get this:
Man, these idiots really do take these pageants seriously if it only took one comment to make the leap from beauty pageant to “armed upriding againt teh LIEbruls!”
WereBear
@Bubblegum Tate: This kind of ignorance drives me crazy:
If it weren’t for liberals, his children would have fallen asleep at their work down at the mill, he’d have gotten his legs ripped off in machinery with no safety devices, and his wife would be blind from making lace in a sweatshop by candlelight.
And he’d be speaking German because the Republicans didn’t want to get involved with “that war in Europe.”
And I’m not even getting close to what would be in the hot dogs.
Bubblegum Tate
@WereBear:
Yup. It’s like A Day in the Life of Joe Republican, except not a spoof.
Doctor Science
@Amanda:
Only half right.
CSL’s works *are* pretty much apologetics dressed up as fiction — but the dressing is IM[not actually humble]O done quite well, better than usual for the genre of apologetic fiction. The Narnia books are far less dogmatic than e.g. Pilgrim’s Progress, or than the kind of children’s books that he+ described as “They try to be funny and fail; they try to preach and succeed.”
JRRT did *not* have a “bizarre personal blend of Catholicism and traditionalism”, he had a pretty standard one — for a well-educated Catholic of his era. He felt that LOTR (and the then-unpublished Simarillion from which it derived) was *pre-Christian*: it depicted an essentially Christian universe, but before Christ had appeared. LOTR resonates with Christianity, and specifically with Catholicism: the veneration of Elbereth, for instance, has no counterpart in CSL but is very familiar to any Catholic who’s prayed to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
It’s surprising to me that conservative Catholics wanted to claim the movies for their own, because IMnahO Peter Jackson took out many of the most Christian parts of the books. Random example: in the movie (Return of the King) when Gandalf and Denethor have their confrontation, Gandalf calls Denethor “Steward!” with scorn in his voice. In the books, Gandalf reminds Denethor to be a good Steward, and says that he is one, too. Stewardship is a central Christian metaphor, and Jackson completely misses the point.
+ or maybe it was Tolkien? it’s in the Essays Presented to Charles Williams, in any event.
Yutsano
@LD50: Worst part of that whole situation? The short story is sooo much better than the movie. In fact that whole collection is very well done if you haven’t read it.
rickstersherpa
1. Movement Conservatives reducing art to a political argument and seeing politial significance in beauty pageants is just more evidence of how they adopted the tropes of the hard, doctrinaire Left (Communist and Trotskist and Maoist) and its cry “everything is political.” That Lewis and Tolkein are conveniently dead make them ready made for adoption to people and motives I doubt either of them would have much to do with, in fact individuals who would fill them with horror. Lewis was very clear about how politics was not his thing and, as evidenced by his friendship, affair, and marriage to Joy Gresham, was in many ways a practical liberal.
2. Since somehow this stream turned from the MS. USA pageant to LOTR, I wll throw in my five cents on that subject. Tolkein was a classic old world conservative Roman Catholic, who believed in a hierarchial order blessed by a supernatural power, and a Universe that was alive and sentient, so that belief certainly influenced his books. However, the most profound influence, and the muse that really motivated those books I believe, and make it something like a classic was WWI and the British experience on the Western Front. I came to this realization upon rereading them after reading Paul Fussell’s “The Great War and Modern Memory.” For instance, in “Return of the KIng” it is pretty clear that the desolation of around and in Mordor was Tolkein’s imaginative recreation of the Western Front (Sommne and Ypres). The relationship between Frodo and Sam, and its tenderness, was an idealization of the many similar relationships between very young officers and enlisted that came to exist in the cauldron of battle as described by Wilfred Own, from the last stanza of “Anthem:”
“What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.”
3. The LOTR books have an apparent happy ending, but not quite, not completely, not really. There are wounds that do not heal, the returning veterans cannot quite fit back into their old lives, they are always a bit apart no matter how sucessful or loved they become, and the four hobbits all leave to die (or cross to the West directly) from their beloved Shire.
4. Jackson had a movie to make so the movies are Jackson’s LOTR as inspired by the books. Evaluate them as movies in themselves. They went on pretty long as it is and somethings have to be cut.
5. And there is so much about the current right’s (and I am afraid also the Cable TV Left – see Bob Somerby – there is a reason both O’Reilly and Olbermann love these kind of stories and it basically all has to do with ratings and desires that underlie those ratings) preoccupation with right-wing beauty queens that is sexist, misogynist, and prurient that really, we are shooting fish in a barrel. And also feeding the interest in looking at the pictures! And I write this based on my a self-awareness of my own often improper delight in the female form.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“CSL’s works are pretty much apologetics dressed up as fiction—but the dressing is IM[not actually humble]O done quite well, better than usual for the genre of apologetic fiction. The Narnia books are far less dogmatic than e.g. Pilgrim’s Progress”
Or Pullman’s His Dark Materials, for that matter. I’m an agnostic: despite that, Pullman annoyed me far more than even C.S. Lewis did with not letting Susan go to Narnia at the end of the series.
Doctor Science
Comrade:
Oh my, yes. You’re quite right: Pullman’s series is much worse, as an apologetic *and* as fiction, than Lewis’.